Billie Jean King has been causing a stir in tennis for more than 50 years.
She’s very good at it and was at it again this week when she said on a conference call to promote the eponymous national women’s team competition, the Billie Jean King Cup, that she would be fine with combining that event with the Davis Cup, the men’s national team competition, into one big mixed World Cup event.
“I think it’s really important to have a World Cup for tennis,” King said.
King’s comments came just weeks ahead of both competitions and typified her occasionally anti-establishment approach to achieving her goals. After all, how often does the woman for which a competition is named take an opportunity to promote that event to announce she’d be OK with effectively ending it?
France celebrate their 2019 win (Paul Kane/Getty Images)
But that’s the way BJK rolls, especially when it’s hard not to see all the problems with the Billie Jean King Cup, as well as the Davis Cup, both of which have struggled to attract top players and fan interest in recent times. Big picture, though: King has long advocated men and women competing together. Years ago, I sat with her at a World Team Tennis event in Washington D.C. She was effectively the majority owner of World Team…
